Today, most users of computing devices have multiple accounts that require the user to provide one or more credentials to gain access to them. Because of this, it is quite common for one person to have multiple passwords for multiple different accounts. With the increasing number of passwords, users typically forget the passwords that they use for their different accounts. Also, with the proliferation of devices that can be associated with one account, a user often has to supply passwords on multiple devices associated with an account whenever the user changes his account password.
To date, there has not been many solutions that provide a simple, but yet robust account-recovery scheme that allows a user to quickly regain access to an account, while providing strong account protection. Ideally, the account recovery scheme should not disrupt service access on multiple devices of the user when the user modifies the account password.